Man Guilty In Burglary That Took Relatives` Lives

December 31, 1992|By Joseph Sjostrom.

GLEN ELLYN — A Glen Ellyn man on Wednesday pleaded guilty but mentally ill to burglary for taking liquor bottles containing cyanide-laced photo processing chemicals, which subsequently caused the death of his father and brother at a family gathering last New Year`s Day.

Paul Grgula, 32, entered the plea before Du Page County Circuit Court Judge Ronald B. Mehling, who accepted the plea and said he would impose a three-year term when the sentence is formally imposed at a hearing scheduled for Jan. 22.

A finding of guilty but mentally ill, either by plea or by a verdict, entitles the defendant to treatment of his mental illness while in prison.

Grgula`s attorney, John F. Donahue, said he suffers from organic brain disease which was aggravated by a head injury he suffered in a motorcycle accident while a teenager.

Investigators said Grgula took several bottles labeled Scotch whiskey from a neighboring unit in the apartment building where he lives at 555 Pershing Ave., sometime last December. On New Year`s Day he brought the bottles to a family gathering where he served drinks from the bottles to his father, Steven Grgula, 65, and his brother, Steven, 35.

The father and brother got sick almost immediately and were taken by ambulance to Good Samaritan Hospital, Downers Grove, where they died Jan. 4.